Justice Thomas' wife urged Arizona lawmakers to choose 'clean slate of electors' after Trump's loss
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas speaks at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore, CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife apparently pushed two Arizona lawmakers to choose electors for former President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss in the state, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.
The emails sent by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas didn’t mention Trump or President Joe Biden by name, but “the context was clear,” the Washington Post reports.
Thomas urged the Republican lawmakers to “please do your constitutional duty” to fight election fraud.
“Article II of the United States Constitution gives you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s electors,” the email from Nov. 9, 2020, read. “Please take action to ensure that a clean slate of electors is chosen.”
Ginni Thomas apparently sent the email using an online platform called freeroots.com, which makes it easy to send form emails to multiple elected officials. She also sent another email about a month later telling the lawmakers that they had the power to protect election integrity.
Ginni Thomas appeared to be pushing an idea endorsed by former Chapman University law professor John Eastman, according to the Washington Post. Eastman thought that legislators could override the popular vote and choose Trump electors because of possible election fraud.
The emails were sent to Arizona House Speaker Russell Bowers and Arizona State Rep. Shawnna Bolick.
A spokesperson for Bowers told the Washington Post that he received hundreds of thousands of emails after the election, and he didn’t see or read the email from Ginni Thomas. Bowers had faced a recall campaign when he refused to change the election outcome in Arizona.
Bolick is married to Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick. Her reply email to Ginni Thomas told her how she could submit complaints about election fraud that she experienced. She told the Washington Post that she responded to Thomas the same way that she responded to others after the election.
Former reporting by the Washington Post and CBS News revealed that Ginni Thomas had sent text messages to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, which urged him to contest Trump’s election loss.
The Washington Post sought comment from Clarence Thomas through a Supreme Court spokesperson, who did not respond to messages from the publication.
The Washington Post noted that Ginni Thomas has previously said she and her husband keep their work separate.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Justice Thomas: Leaked draft opinion on abortion is ‘like kind of an infidelity’”
ABAJournal.com: “Former Chapman law prof who wrote ‘coup memo’ faces ethics probe, state bar confirms”
ABAJournal.com: “Prove it up: Scholars criticize law prof’s speech about secret folders and say it was unsupported”
ABAJournal.com: “Chapman University says it didn’t authorize law prof’s representation of Trump, yet work was on server”
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